In the back of every Washington politicians mind is this sobering fact: Unless Congress acts, the temporary tax cuts it passed when George W. Bush was president will expire at the end of next year.
If they prevent the legislation from expiring, however, they and any Republicans who support this approach will add $2 trillion to [...]
The Senate Thursday voted 60 to 39 to overhaul the nations health care system - President Barack Obamas top 2009 domestic priority - moving he nation closer to near-universal health care coverage early in the next decade.
Fifty-eight Democrats and two independents - and no Republicans - voted to approve the $871 billion bill, which would [...]
Want to keep IRS auditors away? Keep your earnings under $200,000 and they won’t bother you 99 percent of the time.
Returns showing income of $200,000 and above have a nearly 3 percent audit chance. The percentage jumps to more than 6 percent for returns showing earnings of $1 million or more.
IRS enforcement numbers, released Tuesday, [...]
The little town of Libby, Mont., isn’t mentioned by name in the Senate’s mammoth health care bill, but it’s one of the big winners in the legislation, thanks to the influence of Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.
He didn’t advertise the change, and it takes a close read of the bill to find it.
Senate Budget Committee ChairmanKent Conrad said theres a 75 percent chance lawmakers will passa health-care overhaul bill before a Christmas deadline, andthat the measure may prove a short-term political drag forDemocrats.
The North Dakota Democrat said the 10-year Senate healthplan designed to cover tens of millions of uninsured Americans,initially estimated at $848 billion, may be somewhat [...]
Heirs who come into big money after the federal estate tax expires at the end of the month might want to hold off spending it.
The uncertainty is already causing problems for tax planners.
The Senate rejected a bill Wednesday to extend the estate tax for two months while lawmakers work on a more permanent solution.
Citigroup and other banks starting to repay the billions of dollars they borrowed from the government are getting another boost as they exit the bailout program: Billions more in tax breaks.
Under ordinary circumstances, those tax breaks would be severely limited if the companies underwent an ownership change, much like many of them did when the [...]
Federal workers owed the government more than $3 billion in back income taxes in 2008, just as federal tax revenues started to suffer from the recession.
Among cabinet agencies, the Department of Housing and Urban Development had the highest delinquency rate, at just over 4 percent. The Treasury Department, which includes the IRS, had the lowest [...]
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that Weld County authorities violated the Fourth Amendment and privacy rights of suspected illegal immigrants when they used tax returns to potentially build hundreds of identity theft cases against them.
The defendant was one of more than 70 people charged with criminal impersonation and identity theft.
A bipartisan group of former lawmakers and budget officials called on Congress and President Barack Obama Monday to commit to rein in trillion-dollar plus budget deficits to avoid having the spiraling national debt drag down the economy.
The bipartisan group includes former lawmakers and directors of both the Congressional Budget Office and the White House budget [...]
